Pierre Leclerc

Pierre Leclerc (1706-1781) was a French Catholic radical Jansenist émigré priest, living in Haarlem in the Dutch Republic, who was censured at the Council of Utrecht in 1763.

Dr. Constantine Cavarnos has written that the eminent eighteenth century Greek monk and scholar (later Archbishop of Cherson) Eugenios Voulgaris had corresponded[1] with Pierre Leclerc.[2] Because French Jansenism in the eighteenth century had antipapal tendencies, holding to the ecclesiology that bishops are not despots, and that they have to consult their cathedral chapter and the curés in synod, their council of second instance,[3] this ecclesiology recalls the notion of Conciliarism as understood in the Orthodox Church, as well as the previous Conciliar Movement in the Roman Catholic church as expressed at the Councils of Constance in 1414-18, and of Siena in 1423-24. It is natural therefore that Voulgaris and Leclerc had corresponded seeking common ground. Although Jansenists in general had assailed the Jesuits as those responsible for introducing doctrinal novelties, such as the doctrine of papal infallibility, Molinist views of limitless grace, and the devotion to the Sacred Heart[4], Pierre Leclerc's theology within the Jansenist movement however went further, and was in fact actually closer to the Dutch Protestant Reformed tradition of Calvanism instead.

Le Clerc's provocations began with a flat denial of papal primacy by divine right and culminated in the elevation of scriptural authority above that of tradition, conflating the status of bishop and priest along the way.[5] He had printed at Amsterdam, in 1758, an Act of Protest to the whole Church, but especially to that of Holland, against various tenets of Rome; and, in attacking Ultramontane views, had also asserted doctrines utterly opposed to Catholic tradition.[6] He argued that no tradition should be accepted as a point of faith unless it could be confirmed by Scripture. His views on Scripture, not to mention his views on the Papacy and episcopacy, approached Protestant teachings to the point that the Jansenist Provincial Council of Utrecht held in 1763 was convened to condemn Le Clerc and reassert the Jansenist view that Scripture and Tradition were indeed two valid sources of authority.[7]

Contents

Background: Jansenism and the Enlightenment

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries two persistent and often intertwined controversies divided Catholics in Europe, one theological, the other political.

The theological debate centered on the respective roles of divine grace and human free will in the work of eternal salvation. The position taken by the followers of the Dutch theologian Cornelis Jansen (1585-1638) was deeply pessimistic. “Fallen” humanity had no ability to do anything left to its own resources to merit salvation, which was either granted by the grace of God or was not. In some ways their position was close to that of the Protestant Calvinists concerning predestination. On the other hand, the Theologians of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) opposed them from the start, taking an altogether more optimistic stance on the capacities of human nature for moral good without divine grace, and to contribute of its own free will to the work of salvation.[8]

The political debate concerned relations of the Catholic churches in various countries with the state on the one hand, and with the papacy in Rome on the other. In the so-called Gallican (named for the French Catholic Church) view, the church in a given country should enjoy a certain independence from Rome and largely govern itself, for example, in the matter of appointing bishops. They also believed that a general council of the Church was a higher authority than the pope. An important aspect of Jansenist ecclesiology was adopted from French Gallicanism as promoted by the French theologian Edmund Richer (1559-1631)[9], that held that ecclesiastical councils, not the papacy was the method by which doctrinal truth was established.[10] The so-called Ultramontanes ("beyond the mountains", meaning the party of the Papacy of Rome) on the other hand, were convinced that local churches should always be subservient to Rome. The Jesuits in particular became associated with this view, while Gallicanism was especially strong among those of a Jansenist theological bent. This situation applies of course paradigmatically to France, where the controversies were particularly acute, but also characterized Catholicism in the Dutch Republic, which unlike France had been under Protestant rule since the late sixteenth century.

The coalescence of these two controversies in the northern Netherlands in the early eighteenth century led to the foundation of a schismatic Catholic church, variously known as the Church of Holland, Church of Utrecht, and later as the Old Catholic Church, which broke with Rome in 1723 under its own archbishop and hierarchy.[11]

The Enlightenment was another phenomenon of the time which had similarities with the Jansenist movement. "Both the philosophes of the Enlightenment and the Jansenists in Utrecht, supported an open society dedicated to freedom of conscience. While the Jansenist “Republic of Grace” resembled the Enlightened ”Republic of Letters”, Jansenist discourse was ultimately derived from a fundamental religious belief almost exclusively rejected by the philosophes. The activities of the Jansenists in Utrecht, however, demonstrate a public sphere that was religious in nature – where faith and reason cooperated during the European Age of Enlightenment".[12]

Second Council of Utrecht (1763)

The cause of the Second Council of Utrecht[13], a provincial council, was to enforce ecclesiastical discipline on a French émigré living and preaching in Utrecht, Pierre le Clerc, who took Jansenism where the Jansenists themselves always feared it would go, to the brink of Protestantism. Le Clerc’s errors included denying the authority of the papacy and the traditional foundations of the church by advocating the rejection of anything not found directly in Scripture. Therefore, the council met to condemn Le Clerc’s doctrinal errors, but it also offered the Jansenists in Utrecht an opportunity at the same time to establish the veracity of their church by proclaiming their Catholic orthodoxy – but through the means of an open council that represented both the clergy and the episcopacy of the Dutch church.[14][15]

The descriptions of the council emphasized that Le Clerc stood alone amongst the Dutch clergy in his views. Le Clerc was singled out as a radical voice, moreover, as a French Jansenist who, unlike those such as Dupac de Bellegarde, remained outside of the fold of the Utrecht church. To be schismatic was bad enough, and the Utrecht church fought that charge, but Le Clerc “has confounded the notion of schism with that of heresy.”[16]

The Utrecht Jansenists, however, maintained in their faith that it was they, and not the Roman church that represented Christian truth, in spite of Le Clerc’s doctrinal errors, and the papal condemnation that met the provincial council.[17]

With regards to the Orthodox Church, Fr. Aidan Keller writes that the Council of Utrecht, seed of the future Old Catholic movements, affirmed every Roman Catholic dogma and pronounced the Orthodox Faith to be schismatic and false, and that its establishment signaled not a rapprochement with Orthodoxy, then, so much as a refusal to drift yet further from her, as much of the Roman fold was doing.[18]